What Christians believe
Firstly, this is what we don’t believe
We don’t believe that we go to heaven because we are good, that if we are kind and help people and go to church on Sundays, we get a free pass. Nor do we get there by being Baptised or Christened.
'It ain’t necessarily so, what you read in the Bible'. We don’t believe that things in the Bible are meant to be taken with a pinch of salt. Some of it may need explaining - Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark, Daniel in the lion’s den, and most importantly, events concerning the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But what’s in the Bible is what can be trusted to be true. Always.
So this is what we do believe
We believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that he came to earth to be born a man who taught, healed and preached about the coming time when there would be a new kingdom on earth, over which he would rule (this is referred to in the Bible as the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven). He was arrested, tortured and put to death. A few days later he rose from the dead, and was seen by many people on various occasions. He returned to heaven but before doing so, gave reassurance that God’s Spirit would be sent to his followers to help and guide them. That Spirit is still with us today.
We believe that every man and woman on earth is incapable of living a good life. That’s everybody - we just don’t have it in us not to do wrong, especially when we remember that thinking wrong things is the same as doing them. The problem here is that God’s standard is perfection, so we all fall far short of what is required. By miles and miles.
Who Jesus was
Our only hope is with Jesus Christ. Being the Son of God, Jesus was sinless. When he died, he presented the sins of everyone from then to now and in the future. That doesn’t mean that we are sinless, it means the cost of the wrong things we have done is no longer down to us - it means all our sins are forgiven. When this sinks in, and we fully appreciate both our poor condition and what Jesus has done for us, our reaction is to offer our lives (such as they are) to him and recognise and accept him as our Saviour - literally, the one who has saved us from a death without God. From this point, we are his forever and nothing can change that. We have the confidence of knowing that we will be with him in the coming Kingdom of God. It is difficult to put into words the love God has for each of us, that made this possible.
Our authority is the Bible, the Word of God. We believe that everything written in the Bible comes from God, that the writers were themselves inspired to write the books by God. Therefore we evaluate everything by the Bible to judge its integrity. If something fits with the Bible, it fits with God’s will. Studying the Word of God is important, and is something that is never completed - there are always more things to learn, new insights to understand.
So is that all?
Well, there are two answers:
Yes, it is as simple as that. Becoming a Christian, a follower of Jesus is just a question of laying out before him the fact that we are without hope without him: recognising that his death was personally for each of us so that nothing we have done or will do that is wrong will be held against us: and wanting to become more like Jesus, who came to show us God more clearly - having a personal relationship with him, and being totally submissive to God.
No there is much more, but that’s where we start from. Learning to live with this sacrifice of his Son for us, this tremendous gift from God that we don’t deserve (we call this grace) is a big thing. But someone who has been ‘saved’, that is, has come to believe that Jesus is their Saviour, typically gets a hunger to learn more about him and pass on to others what they know. Sunday morning services form just part of that journey, and all journeys are, after all, easier if made with others.
If you would like to find out more about any of this, or just to talk to someone, we would like to hear from you.
Please call us or just come along on a Sunday morning. We look forward to talking together.
